Lorin Maazel just made me throw up

I'm listening to the start of this week's New York Philharmonic broadcast.

Opening work? The Brahms First Piano Concerto. Lorin Maazel's got the stick.

And, the opening was HUGELY slow. Draggy. Tired. Tired far beyond Romantic-era drama. And, the rest of the first movement isn't much better. It's a waste of Yefin Bronfman at the keyboard.

This has to be the worst NY Phil performance I've heard since Lenny Bernstein's Berlin Wall performance of Beethoven's Ninth, and for similar reasons.

I won't keep listening to this. I'm afraid the Sibelius Second will get butchered just as badly.

NY Phil revolts against Gilbert Kaplan

The grande dame of the nation’s symphonies has said “ the emperor has no clothes” on amateur orchestra conductor Gilbert Kaplan, who conducts only the Mahler 2nd and has parlayed himself into an expert, or self-alleged expert, on interpreting the symphony.

NY Phil musicians are doubly pissed, because Kaplan got the gig to conduct the “Resurrection” on the 100th anniversary of Mahler debuting it in America, with the same orchestra.

In fact, trombonist David Finlayson filleted and gutted Kaplan on his blog.

Irony alert – New York Philharmonic

The NYPhil is tonight, on its national concert broadcast series, playing Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion,” as conducted a few years ago by Kurt Mazur.

But… Easter was last week. And… Passover hasn’t yet happened.

Will we get Stravinsky’s “Abraham and Isaac” next week? The NYPhil may not even have played that in the past 20 years for all I know.